The Arrested Development Movie Is Getting Closer To Actually Happening, So Maybe There Is A God

The GIF above perfectly summarizes my feelings whenever a new Arrested Developmentdevelopment (See what I did?) pops up and surprises me like Gene Parmesan. The new comeback season is so close I can taste it, but it’s still not close enough. Thankfully it’s becoming more and more likely that we won’t have to say goodbye to the Bluths after their stint on Netflix, which I’m sure every fan of the show will speed through in one night and then go, “Now what?”

It looks like a movie might be closer to happening than we once thought. This weekend Mitch Hurwitz, the show’s creator, was at the SXSW Film Festival and said he was “confident that we will succeed at it.” The deal hasn’t happened yet, but Hurwitz says the new season will set up a future film: “There is a bigger story out there that does exist.”

My experience hearing about what would happen with the Arrested Development movie up until now has involved a whole lot of this:

I don’t want to be the kind of fan who isn’t willing to be grateful that I’m even getting a new season. After all, an extra 14 episodes almost a decade after cancellation is pretty amazing. But I have two reasons to be desperate to see the Bluths on the big screen.

The first one is pretty selfish. I’ve been rewatching the series for the third time recently, and it just keeps reminding me how good it was. There’s so much to rediscover by rewatching existing episodes (all the foreshadowing of Buster’s hand incident, just to name one), but nothing compares to experiencing those moments for the first time.

The second reason I’m in favor of a movie is that it would allow Arrested Development‘s devoted fanbase to actually get together in the same place at the same time and experience their favorite characters as a group. I’ve never watched an episode of the show with a group larger than a few people, so it would be interesting to see if the movie screenings offered any type of cult movie behavior, as you might see at a Rocky Horror Picture Show midnight event. Like sharing frozen bananas and wearing never-nude cut-offs and saying “Her?” whenever Ann is onscreen. The difference here is that the audience will be united by their love for the characters and the history of the show, but they would be witnessing an entirely new story as a unit. I think that would be well worth the price of admission.

That said, I wouldn’t go as far as to say that the show should come back to television permanently. I would hate to see it go the route of shows like The Office and wear out its welcome. I love it too much.